The American & New England Studies Program (AMNESP) recently received an anonymous $1.7-million endowment, which will support a postdoctoral fellowship in American material culture. This gift is a boon to both the College of Arts & Sciences and the broader study of American material culture and the humanities. It both signifies the influential role the College plays in the study of American material culture and also helps further that influence. With this generous gift, the program can bring a recent American studies doctoral graduate with a specialty in material culture to campus to teach an undergraduate course and an upper-level class each year.
Material culture is about using objects as evidence for humanistic arguments, in part because written records are limited to the literate part of society. “Using objects as sources lets scholars address a broader range of questions for a broader segment of the population,” says William Moore, the Director of AMNESP. “There are ideas embedded in the objects we use, the things we make, the things we buy, that aren’t expressed in written form.”
Moore will start recruiting for the first fellow to begin a two-year term in fall 2020. This fellowship will allow a scholar to gain teaching experience while turning his or her dissertation into a book manuscript. “This fellowship is meant to strengthen our program and the field more broadly,” Moore says. It will be a career-building opportunity for a young, cutting-edge scholar.
Next year AMNESP will celebrate its 50th anniversary, and the endowment pays homage to the program’s history; it is named for one of the program’s founders, Abbott Lowell Cummings. Cummings helped bring material culture studies to the forefront of AMNESP’s research and teaching, which then helped the program become a national leader in this subdiscipline. This gift recognizes the strength of the program and builds upon it. Please join us in congratulating AMNESP on this exciting new addition!
You can read more about this gift in Bostonia.